Political Dig

Republicans’ Argument In Clinton Impeachment Just Came Back To Haunt Them

On Monday, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer argued that the president cannot obstruct justice because, as the head of federal law enforcement, he’s above the law. But the exact opposite view was once argued by another senior Trump lawyer: Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

On February 23, 1999, then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions took to the Senate floor and laid out an impassioned case for President Bill Clinton to be removed from office based on the argument that Clinton obstructed justice amid the investigation into his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

“The facts are disturbing and compelling on the President’s intent to obstruct justice,” he said, according to remarks in the congressional record.

He added:

“The chief law officer of the land, whose oath of office calls on him to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, crossed the line and failed to defend the law, and, in fact, attacked the law and the rights of a fellow citizen,” Sessions said during Clinton’s trial in the Senate, two months after he was impeached by the House. “Under our Constitution, equal justice requires that he forfeit his office.”

And he wasn’t alone. As noted by Politico, more than 40 current GOP members of Congress voted for the impeachment or removal of Clinton from office for obstruction of justice.

They include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – who mounted his own passionate appeal to remove Clinton from office for obstruction of justice – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, who was a House member at the time.

Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd argued in an interview with Axios on Monday that the “president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case.”

Where Sessions argued in Clinton’s case that the president had the responsibility to “defend the law,” Dowd argued that the president’s oversight of law enforcement makes it impossible for anyone in the office to obstruct it in the first place.

The interview followed Trump’s tweet—which Dowd says he wrote—that he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when he was fired in February.

Trump has come under scrutiny for his decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey amid an intensifying investigation of Trump associates’ connections to Russia and whether any aided the Russian effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Comey has since testified that Trump pressured him to pull back on an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty last week to a count of lying to federal investigators about his contacts with Russian officials during the presidential transition.